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Child dies in anthrax outbreak linked to thawed reindeer corpse

Under bacterial attack

Steve Morgan/Alamy

A DEADLY outbreak of anthrax among reindeer herders on the Yamal peninsula in Siberia, Russia, is being put down to the thawed corpse of a reindeer or human.

The outbreak claimed its first victim this week – a 12-year-old boy – and some 90 people have been sent to hospital with suspected anthrax infection, more than half of them children. It is the first outbreak in the region since 1941.

“Some 90 people have been hospitalised because of the outbreak, more than half of them children“

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Investigators from the Russian army’s elite biological warfare unit speculate that the outbreak stems from the thawing of a reindeer corpse infected by the Bacillus anthracis bacterium. Temperatures topped 35 °C in a recent heatwave, which could have melted the ice, exposing the corpse to the open air.

The corpse could have infected other reindeer, spreading anthrax to herders in infected meat. Some 2350 reindeer have died, and 4500 have been vaccinated to contain the outbreak.

Another possibility is that the source is a human corpse from a local burial ground, say the investigators. The herders place their dead in wooden boxes above ground, so spores could have been released by the heatwave and dispersed by the wind.